The trope is named after Roman Emperor Nero, who is purported to have been singing and playing his lyre (not what we call the "fiddle" despite Pop-Cultural Osmosis) while Rome was ravaged by a massive fire (though there are no detailed accounts of the fire from contemporary historians, thus there is debate about how true that is), and as such implies an authority ignoring the pleasof its subjects, or simply not caring enough, although it has broadened to mean simply carrying on as normal when the whole world falls to pieces around you.

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Examples:

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Anime and Manga

Played straight in One Piece. Sabo hears a rumor that the slums of his city will burn from a planned arson fire and thousands of citizens will burn. Sabo decides to go around the upper-class area of the city to investigate. He sees that the rich nobles are calm and happy, so concludes that the fire won't be happening, until the nobles calmly mention it. Sabo is confused, wondering why no one is in a panic like he is. He talks with a wealthy elder, who confirms that the slums will burn and people will die, but the nobles don't care. In fact, some nobles want the poor to die because 'they don't deserve to live if they aren't rich'. The old man actually warns Sabo NOT to save the citizens.

In X1999, Seishiro and Fuuma stroll through Nakano Sun Plaza eating ice cream and chatting amiably. It all seems well and good until you realize that as they're doing this they're actively destroying the place.

In Neon Genesis Evangelion, as the latest powerful Angel draws close to bringing about the Third Impact and the annihilation of humanity, Kaji Ryoji is found watering his watermelon garden. He explains that since he can't pilot an Eva, there's nothing he can do to make a difference, so he might as well spend his final moments calmly doing something he enjoys.

In Rebuild 2.22, in the end, while Shinji is causing Near-Third Impact, Kaji and Mari just take it easy while everyone else is scared out of their minds. Later, at the end of Rebuild 3.33, Mari is sitting around in Unit-08's entry plug, drinking tea while Unit-13 is causing the Fourth Impact!

In Future War 198X, Laura still sits behind the piano at the underground jazz bar in Tokyo after hearing that enemy jets are inbound, playing a mournful tune while thinking of Wataru. Michael heartbrokenly sings "Eidelweiss" to himself while looking at the white flower his dead girlfriend once wore in her hair after blasting the nuclear warhead and shaking the whole war.

Toward the end of Speed Grapher, Suitengu seals up a majority of members into the Roppongi club with intent to demolish it, if the JSDF doesn't do it first. Relatively few of them are shaking at the barred entrance in panic while most continue indulging in Hookers and Blow.

Sekirei has Natsuo Ichinomia, who is the Ashikabi of the feared Disciplinary Squad, combine this trope with Dissonant Serenity as he explains key info to Minato while a battle rages around them. They are almost killed and he resumes the conversation as if nothing is happening. None of the chaos caused by Sekirei Plan bothers him because he no longer cares what happens to him or the world.

In Anatolia Story, one of Nakia's plans to discredit Yuri involved hiring a pretty peasant girl to pretend to be her. Said peasant girl proceeded to lounge around in luxurious clothing, demand high-class foods and constant entertainment, and basically make life hell for everyone waiting on her, causing them to think "Ishtar" was just another spoiled noblewoman. As she performed this charade, meanwhile, most of the people outside her palace were dying of a plague. In a later chapter, Yuri is none too impressed to find a fortress she broke into was basically having an orgy while they were being invaded.

Near the end of Mahoromatic, it's quite clear that something calamitous is going to happen to the planet. However, most people just calmly go throughout their day, with one woman proclaiming happily she's getting the ingredients to cook her husband's favorite dinner.

While Millennium reduces London to a corpse filled, smoldering wreck in Hellsing Ultimate, The Major nonchalantly enjoy a nice dinner in his airship.

Played for Laughs in Kill la Kill. Mako gets forcibly taken to Osaka to help with the battle there, but winds up going sightseeing as the city descends into ridiculous amounts of chaos.

Comic Books

A rather chilling scene in The DCU miniseries 52: In Superman's absence (due to power failure), Lex Luthor has started a program to give ordinary people superpowers, and soon Metropolis is swarming with self-styled superheroes. But Luthor becomes obsessed with a new hero, Supernova, and to call him out, on the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, during a huge rally for the new "heroes," he switches their powers off. Luthor spends the next few moments waiting for Supernova's arrival chatting casually on a cell phone as hundreds of helpless people fall out of the sky and onto the pavement.

The funniest part is when one of them is about to fall on top of him while he's on the phone. He excuses himself, walks out of the spot and continues talking as the guy plummets just behind him.

Watchmen: while millions of people are dying from a monster in downtown New York, Ozymandias, its creator, enjoys a nice dinner. The arrival of the heroes hardly deters him.

In The Punisher: Last Days, during the Final Incursion, the Kingpin decides to invite a bunch of other supervillains to drink with him and quietly watch all their various enemies die on the frontlines of the cosmic war before they themselves are wiped from existence. Given the comicbook that this happens in, no prize for guessing that Frank Castle ruins the party by killing the attendees.

In Wolverines, upon finding out that plan she was following from her dead lover Destiny was supposed to revive Wolverine, and not Destiny herself, Mystique throws a fit and refuses to complete the plan, deciding she would rather let the entire universe be destroyed if it meant reviving Wolverine instead of Destiny.

Ultimate Galactus Trilogy: Sure, Gah Lak Tus may have fired a missile at 99% of light speed directly to earth, but did anyone remembered to put some vodka on Tony's armor?

The Ultimates: Earth is about to blow up, but Herr Kleiser does not care. All he wants, all he wanted since WWII, is to best Captain America and have him say "I surrender, Herr Kleiser. Make it quick". Good luck with that.

Fan Works

Zigzagged in the original Shadowchasers The fic takes place in Neo Domino City, chronologically at the same time the Dark Signer Arc of the canon series. Right after the Arcadia Building is destroyed by the Earthbound Gods, Mistle and all the Neo Domino Shadowchasers except Shichiro are watching old episodes of The Three Stooges on basic cable. (And when Shichiro tells them how foolish it is, Ember says, "Not only that, it's an episode with Shemp in it." However, it quickly made apparent that they're all very frightened and are doing it to stay calm.

In a nutshell, this trope essentially deconstructs Scar's bratty "I'm the king, I can do whatever I want" attitude, as he proved to be an incompetent king, and he even refuses to acknowledge for his disastrous reign out of pride. As a result, all of his subjects, including his hyena lackeys, despise him for this reason.

In the The War of the Worlds remake, Tom Cruise's neighborhood mechanic ignores all the ominous signs of the impending alien invasion in order to rush-fix a Dodge minivan. He keeps ignoring the aliens while Tom Cruise steals that same minivan, up until they shoot him in the back with the death ray.

Jenny from the film Deep Impact ends up spending her time at home with her dad as a huge comet approaches the Earth. A minute later, as a huge wave is destroying New York, we see a man on a park bench quietly reading a newspaper just before he's swept away. One wonders what could have possibly been in the newspaper.

The Australians in the On the Beach while expecting the lethal radioactive clouds to arrive.

Titanic (1997): The ship's architect Thomas Andrews, bandleader Wallace Hartley, and Captain Edward John Smith. Andrews stands in the first class lounge, calmly watching the clock tick away, Hartley and his band are playing a hymn, and Captain Smith remains at his post on the bridge.

The two Dawn of the Dead movies are effectively this, they hide away in their own little paradise while the rest of the world is destroyed by the zombies. Hell, in the 2004 remake a man starves to death just across the road while they're making lattes. They do care though.

Well they do try to send him food, they just fail miserably and eventually the entire mall is overrun with zombies.

The original has another great example with the "Hunting Parties". While in its predecessor they are doing an effective, if indiscriminate job of clearing the countryside, by this point it is evident that they are likely going to fail, so what we see is a bunch of soldiers, cops, and assorted rednecks grilling, getting drunk, and doing their damnedest to enjoy their last hours of life.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there is an old lady sitting at the street side table oblivious to or uninterested in what's going on around her while the world is being destroyed. This is Douglas Adams's mother. The director didn't give any acting directions to her or anybody else in the scene for what they were supposed to do, to simulate chaos, so she just sat there reading a newspaper.

Con Air depicts the increasingly chaotic results of a bunch of convicts hijacking a prison transport plane. Toward the climax, while the plane is rapidly descending on the improvised landing strip in Las Vegas and the surviving passengers flail about in a state of panic, Steve Buscemi's character sits unperturbed in his usual seat, cradling a Ken doll and singing "He's Got the Whole World In His Hands."

Der Untergang, or Downfall, features quite a few scenes of drunken revelry as high-ranking members of the Nazi party await the inevitable as the Allies close in on Berlin. In one scene, a dance party comes to a halt when an artillery shell blasts down a wall and fills the room with dust and smoke.

In Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, there is a scene where British officers calmly go about their business as African aboriginal warriors brutally slaughter the troops in camp.

In Fight Club the ending scene features the main character kissing his romantic interest while watching various skyscrapers explode and collapse to the ground throughout the city.

Yusupov: You ministers never cease to amaze me. You think you are in control, but you are going to be swept away just like us princes. I am throwing a little soiree on Thursday, why not come? I cannot stop the revolution, but until it comes, let us have some fun. Even if it only for a few more days.

During the sequence in Superman II when Superman and the Kryptonian villains are destroying half of Metropolis in the wake of their fight there is a crazed hobo in a telephone booth who laughs and talks to no one on the other end while the booth gets blown sideways down the street by super breath.

Batman Returns: As his Red Triangle Gang riots in the streets mere blocks away, Gotham City mayoral candidate Oswald Cobblepot (a.k.a. The Penguin) goes for a stroll in Gotham Plaza. Batman eventually makes his way to the plaza and demands to know what Oswald is up to. "Touring the riot scene. Gravely assessing the devastation," Oswald replies with mock seriousness.

The Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame has an almost literal version of this; "while Paris burns" to be precise. Frollo threatens to burn down all of Paris and manages to burn down a considerable portion of it, but while Quasimodo and the gargoyles are looking out at the fire, they're discussing (and eventually singing about) whether or not Quasimodo might have a chance with Esmeralda after all.

Hugo: Paris, the city of lovers, is glowing this evening. True, that's because it's on fire but still, there's l'amour.

In Mean Girls, after the female population of the school has descended into madness over the Burn Book, Regina George stands at the top of the stairs and admires her handiwork as people run past and debris flies through the shot.

In Fish Story, a comet is on a direct collision course with earth. The full effect is somewhere from Societal Collapse to Total Extinction on a planetary scale. The streets are abandoned, people having fled to higher ground. On the other hand, there's a record store that isn't going to open itself, and so the proprietor goes about business as usual, insistent that everything will be fine. He's right.

The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961). Water rationing is imposed as the Earth hurls toward the Sun. At one point, the protagonist has to fight his way through a street full of teenagers high on drugs having a water fight. He eventually makes his way to the apartment of his Love Interest, and they spend more quiet time together.

Carry On... Up the Khyber: When the Governor learns that the Residency is about to be attacked, he resolves to do nothing and instead holds a black tie dinner. The officers and ladies sit down to a fine dinner as the Residency is being shelled around them, completely ignoring the chaos going on. Only the chaplain Brother Belcher, who is the Only Sane Man, comments on the destruction or takes any precautions.

The Addams Family: At the start of the Mamushka scene, Gomez proudly announces, among other things, "we danced the Mamushka while Nero fiddled".

Literature

As depicted in A Tale of Two Cities, Madam Defarge and the rest of the tricoteuses sit beside the guillotine and knit furiously while people are executed to show support for the Revolution and its Reign of Terror.

"The Masque of the Red Death": They shut themselves in a tower to avoid plague and hold a party. The whole point of the story is to give them a massively karmic death, a red death. The source tale, The Decameron, did not kill off the characters. It's just an excuse for a frame tale that shuts people in a room so they'll tell stories to pass the time.

Stephen King's Cell has the 'Sprinters', people who steal the most expensive/fast looking vehicles they can find and drive them down the street after the Zombie Apocalypse renders their owners either dead or insane. On the two occasions when specific Sprinters are mentioned, they manage to get themselves either injured or killed spectacularly.

Averted in The Roman Mysteries: Rome literally burns, but the characters are certainly not indifferent or distracted by irrelevancies.

Subverted in the Kim Newman short story "Soho Golem", in which an investigation into a supernatural gangland murder takes the heroes to a very decadent party being held by a local porn baron. However, while there's certainly plenty of hedonistic fun being had, it's not being had by any of the people who are potentially involved or are potential future victims of the killer — all of whom, the heroes note, look very, very worried.

Sentinel Prime is guilty of this in Transformers: Exodus. As Cybertron descends into chaos and civil war, he goes to attend a comedy show under the protection of his armed guards who unfortunately for him turn out to be undercover Decepticon agents who take him hostage.

In Eclipse, Edward reads a newspaper article about how countless people are dying and disappearing in Seattle. He notes that it's the work of a newborn vampire...and then helps Bella fill out college applications. Later, when Alice finds out that an entire army of newborns is coming to kill Bella, she insists that they still go ahead with the graduation party she planned for Bella. It's arguable whether either of these were meant to be examples, however.

In The Witchlands, Merik notes sourly that while there's a new superpower rising right in the middle of the continent, the politicians at the Truce Summit prefer gossip and merry dancing to any serious discussion.

Comrades of War by Sven Hassel. In a luxurious restaurant constructed in an underground bunker, high-ranking officers and Nazi officials enjoy unrationed food and wine while a firestorm devastates Hamburg.

A lady pointed to the people who were laughing, drinking and dancing and whispered to her partner: "Don't they have any heart at all? Don't they know that a whole world is going to ruin, burnt to cinders by incendiary bombs?"

Her partner, an elderly SS officer, put a piece of juicy red meat into his mouth and took a sip of red wine. "Today the brain is more important than the heart, my dear. People without a heart have a bigger chance to survive."

Live-Action TV

Band of Brothers had an interesting example that happened after the disaster. The opening of one of the episodes showed a quartet of German violinists playing somber music as their fellow villagers were working to clean up the rubble from their ruined town.

The Day of the Triffids: A man is shown playing the violin while panicked policemen who've lost their sight gun down civilians. After he's finished playing, the man calmly walks to the balcony and throws himself off.

In the final episode of Kamen Rider OOO, Kosei Kougami indulges in his hobby of singing "Happy Birthday" and baking birthday cakes while the city outside is gradually being devoured by a monstrous construct out to absorb everything, and the building he's in grows increasingly damaged.

While Rome doesn't burn, there's an orgy in Cleopatra's throne room as the army of Octavian closes in, and an emissary demands unconditional surrender. Cleopatra pleads with Antony to flee or come up with some clever military trick.

Antony: I'm not a fucking magician. Look around us, woman. Whores, hermaphrodites, and lickspittles. This is our only now.

Aptly present in the ITV miniseries The Great Fire, in which King Charles's courtiers and mistresses carry on with their fun and games while London burns.

In Dead Set, since the cast was originally supposed to be for Big Brother before the Zombie Apocalypse broke out, there's an element of this to the setting as a whole. More specifically, there's Marky's constantly obsessing about what the papers are saying about him (completing ignoring that most of civilisation is, y'know, collapsing) and Pippa ignoring the way a zombie is banging on the door between them to read a magazine.

The villainy of a couple of characters in Game of Thrones is highlighted by acting this way while witnessing the atrocities they perpetrate:

Walder Frey gleefully slurps down his wine during the Red Wedding where he has the King in the North and his bannermen slaughtered in a horrific violation of Guest Right.

Cersei Lannister smiles and triumphantly sips a glass of wine as she watches the wildfire cache burn down the Great Sept of Baelor, along with all of her rivals in it, in the distance. She's clearly enjoying the awful spectacle.

In Grimm, according to a secret histories grimoire, Nero hired a specialized were-elemental to burn out the Christian district. Unfortunately for everyone involved, said were-elementals are pathological sadists and the arsonist wanted a burn for the history books. The Grimm who was recording and hunting him down failed to stop him before he could move on to the rest of the city.

In Worm when whole worlds are falling apart, Khepri is gathering all remotely useful powered people and sees The Sleeper... sitting on a lawn chair idly reading a book. The fact that she thought he was more trouble than he was worth has spawned endless theories.

Foyle's War: One Body of the Week takes Detective Foyle to a resort where English Idle Rich are riding out World War 2 in leisure, with plenty of luxury food that contravenes rationing rules. Foyle, a WWI veteran whose son is an enlisted pilot, is deeply unimpressed with the frivolity.

In Battlestar Galactica (1978), with the refugee fleet facing food shortages to the point of starvation, Captain Apollo investigates a report that food is being hoarded on the luxury ship, The Rising Star. Sure enough, Apollo and Boomer discover Sire Uri and his cronies gorging on an abundant supply heedless of the starvation looming amongst the fleet. Captain Apollo is not having any of that and instantly orders all the munchies confiscated for redistribution as far as they will go.

Music

The song "Dancing With Tears in My Eyes" from Ultravox is about a man driving home from work and hearing that a catastrophe (presumably a nuclear war) is on its way. He then goes home to his wife, they get drunk, make love to their favorite music and the last verse ends with "it's time, and I don't think we really care."

"It's Christmas at Ground Zero" if taken more seriously, also sounds exactly like this.

In "One of Those Days," Weird Al recounts a number of tragedies, great and small, as if they're all minor annoyances. In the last part, he mentions that he cut himself shaving and "they're dropping the bomb" in the same breath.

"We dance to the sound of sirens, and we watch genocide to relax." (Covenant, "Theremin")

More recently, there's "Last Dance".

The song Accordion Player by Voltaire is about an accordion player who refused to take part in a war in his country, even when the fighting came to his town. The song ends with the musician declaring repeatedly "I want to die playing", the music becoming more frantic and impassioned as sounds of battle rage around it.

Young Marble Giants' "Eating Noddemix" is about a wealthy socialite who engages in leisurely and vain activites such as gazing in her bathroom mirror, putting on her makeup, painting her nails, drinking wine, watching television, and nibbling the titular Swiss candy bar while at the same time enough people are dying in a train-car collision for it to be an "all-night job" for the city workers.

There Is No Depression In New Zealand by Blam Blam Blam. The song, released in 1981, is told from the viewpoint of then-Prime Minister of New Zealand Robert Muldoon, who insisted everything was hunky-dory and that those who said otherwise were nothing more than rabble-rousers. Later the same year, that sense of security was loudly interrupted by the Springbok Tour which bitterly polarised the public.

Daniel Amos's "Dance Stop" (from Vox Humana) is another song about the masses dancing while the atomic bombs fall.

Well, tell me please how love can be With a kick/snare giving you a fantasy (AINT NO FUTURE FAR AS I CAN SEE!) If I could dance, I might agree

Sixpence None the Richer's "Paralyzed" is about an encounter with a journalist who lost a friend in Kosovo, which left guitarist Matt Slocum feeling that the band, with its three-minute pop songs, was doing this. The chorus even invokes this trope almost by name:

You can take my heart And hold it together as we fall apart Maybe together we can make a mark in the stars we embark And keep us together as the lights go dark

Mythology and Religion

The maxim of the 'three wise monkeys' is commonly interpreted in the West as 'turning a blind eye'.

Theater

The first act of You Can't Take It with You ends with a lot of fireworks exploding offstage and a lot of people wildly shouting and rushing about onstage. The imperturbable Grandpa, however, just says "Well, well, well!" and sits down. "If a lot of people weren't in the way," the script suggests, "you feel he'd like to throw some darts."

In Les Misérables, as Paris recovers from the tragic deaths of the students and soldiers who fought on the barricades, Thenardier and his gang cheerfully go about grave robbing the corpses.

George S. Kaufman's comedy sketch "The Still Alarm" is about a group of people in a house who seem remarkably unconcerned about it being on fire. The sketch ends with a fireman literally fiddling while the house burns.

Tabletop Games

The BattleTech sourcebook Jihad: Final Reckoning features The Master on a balcony, laughing maniacly as the city in the background is being nuked from orbit.

Video Games

Near the end of Metal Gear Solid 2, there's a soldier patrolling and listening to his Walkman, totally oblivious to the fact that the entire facility he's in is getting destroyed in six minutes, give or take.

PresidentShinra looks calmly out of his window at the destruction of a whole sector of the city, a Haydn piece playing in the background.

When the giant monster known as Weapon fires on Midgar, Rufus Shinra just stands and watches the energy beams heading right for the Shinra building before they blow out the entire floor he's on in a massive firestorm. He does duck at the last second. Somehow, that seems to have helped him, since he got better.

The opening cutscene of StarCraft: Brood War features a marine who is saved by another marine with a rocket launcher. The aforementioned marine is black, wears sunglasses, has football face-stripes on and is rocking back and forth to rock music. When the marine he saved asks where the air support is, he calmly points to the battlecruiser hovering overhead (which the other dude somehow missed). At the end of the scene, the battlecruiser takes off, and the marine seals his suit with a reflective gold face-covering. The scene ends with a pull back from the two marines as an impossible number of Zerg units overruns them. The black Marine jamming out during a battle is possibly a Shout-Out to Apocalypse Now.

You can probably find countless examples from The Sims. One sim decided to take a bath while the kitchen was burning wildly and killing the sim's poor family members.

The first half of the Meet the Medic video is like this. While most of the team is getting utterly owned, the Medic and the Heavy are back in the clinic cracking jokes and making comically bad medical decisions. Promptly subverted in the second half of the video, in which the result of those comically bad medical decisions solves the crisis rather handily.

Done very weirdly in the Meet the Pyro video. The Pyro is constantly in a self-inflicted oblivious state of this, so while in real life he's slaughtering people by the dozens and razing entire villages to the ground on his own, in his mind he's giving children lollipops and blowing bubbles and making rainbows.

After finally reuniting Anju and Kafei and obtaining the Couple's Mask, they remain in their room while encouraging Link to seek refuge, apparently aware and accepting of the fact that the moon is about to crash into the town.

"We shall greet the morning... together."

On the eve of the final day, the good ending for the Romani/Cremia sidequests has the two sisters tending to their cow. Romani seems oblivious to the danger of the moon, but Creamia ignores mentioning it in front of her sister and handles their impending doom with calm acceptance.

In South Clock Town, the carpenters will continue to build their scaffolding even as the moon comes closer and closer. Tragically subverted on the third night, as all of the carpenters except the boss flee the city, leaving the boss to scream in disgust. If the player speaks to him as Deku Link, he apologizes for being unable to finish work and wishes he could make the moon go away.

Final Fantasy VI. When Emperor Gestahl (pretends to) repent for the evil he's done and pledges to restore peace, balance, and harmony, he invites the heroes to dine at a truly lush and expensive banquet. Meanwhile, his Empire is in ruins, his soldiers are restless and skittish, his people are dying, and his capital is burning to the ground.

Gears of War 3: All of the government officials and "important" scientists went to Azura, an island that has very lavish buildings the likes of which aren't seen anywhere else on Sera. The soldiers, on the other hand, are forced to fight in a HopelessForever War against the Locust. When Delta Squad finds out, they're suitably disgusted.

In the Sadie's Story extras in Halo 3: ODST, an overweight butcher stays in his store, happily trying to sell or outright give away his meat to refugees fleeing New Mombasa, though he's doing this so that people can have food while getting out of the city, and you can hear a woman thanking him profusely for giving her a number of kabobs. He also admits that he is extremely fat and would take up space on a bus or train that would be better spent on thinner people.

Halo: Reach's "New Alexandria" level has, as an Easter Egg activated by a switch on another building, a dance club where a Brute DJ is spinning "Never Surrender" from Halo 2 (and "Siege of Madrigal" if you hit another switch on the roof) while the city burns. The Grunts even dance to the music.

In later updates, they will cancel tasks that take them outside the safe zone... but they won't go back into the safe zone, just mill around outside randomly self-assigning and canceling tasks because they're outside and too dumb to go inside.

In Fallout 3, you can stumble upon a bizarre building owned by a Russian ex-mercenary named Dukov. All he does all day is party, drink, get high, and have sex with his two "party girls". He seems completely ambivalent to the fact that they are in the middle of a hilariously dangerous city full of mutants, and the only reason his whores stick around and put up with him in the first place is for self-preservation, though one of them asks you for a safe escort out. Of course, Dukov is old, and likely both out of practice and drunk off his ass, so he's easy enough for you to kill. It helps that he wears pajamas.

Near the end of the second act of BioShock, Andrew Ryan activates the Self-Destruct Mechanism of his underwater city. When you finally reach his office, he is calmly playing Office Golf. Things get worse from there.

If you count player action, the option to invoke this becomes a trope itself.

In Saints Row: The Third, the antagonist Killbane, upon being humiliated on live television, (Either by de-masking him or by defeating him) actually quotes the origin of the trope itself...

Killbane: This is MY city...and I get to fiddle while it burns...

The title screen for Rescue Team 3 shows the team members in question playing around on their laptop, counting their money and drinking coffee while reading a newspaper, with "help" written on the sand in front of them and a hurricane raging in the background.

This is how the Kinstone subquests can come across, in The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. Monsters to defeat? Dungeons to explore? Not now, there are Kinstones to be fused! Link can even do one with the King, as Zelda is frozen as a statue and Vaati is on the loose, and all the King says is "You want to fuse Kinstones at a grave time like this? Very well!"

You are able to invoke this trope (and Bystander Syndrome on top of it, as if that wasn't enough) in Pokémon X and Y in Geosenge Town after Team Flare activates the Ultimate Weapon that not only is going cause a lot of destruction but will absorb all the life force of the residents in Route 10, by having your picture taken in front of it where Phil the Photo Guy still offers his services. Yes, the Nebulous Evil Organisation is unleashing their Doomsday Device that they intend to destroy the world with, but at least you can get a great picture of it. Ironically, since your mission is to stop the villains' Evil Plan, this overlaps with Permanently Missable Content, since the Ultimate Weapon gets destroyed. If you want that picture, you have to take it before infiltrating Team Flare's secret lab.

The Reapers are overrunning the galaxy, worlds are falling left and right, and the remaining military powers in the galaxy are desperately throwing together a plan to try and stop or at least delay the onslaught. Meanwhile, various characters and NPCs get into romances, focus on their own small-time ambitions, and at least a couple of businessmen figure out a way to make a modest profit helping the war effort.

Asari military strategist: The Nimbus cluster has fallen, and our people are here, dancing instead of fighting.

The Citadel DLC is about Shepard's crew being ordered to take some time off for R&R while the Normandy is undergoing needed maintenance and repairs. You can go to a casino, hit an arcade, compete in an American Gladiators-esque game show, and throw one last glorious party with your crew. You actually get two sets of War Assets for it, one since the Normandy is now functioning better than ever (it was just repaired) and two the party solidified you all as True Companions.

The Trope Namer is humorously referenced in Mass Effect, where Shepard can say, "I'd give [the Citadel Council] fiddles but I doubt they read history."

In Shin Megami Tensei IV's Chaos Ending, Flynn and Lucifer sit at Mikado Castle's battlements as the kingdom burns around them, with Tokyo's survivors and the imprisoned demons rapidly escaping their hellhole. Knowing this will result in a Social Darwinist populace, hardened by war, Lucifer all but assures Flynn that, as the strongest, he will be crowned king of the new humanity. Given Flynn's a Heroic Mime, it's a bit hard to see if this falls here or in Dancin' in the Ruins.

While roaming around Endercon in Minecraft: Story Mode, you can find an oddly nonchalant NPC hopping on a slime block. Later, when the game's Eldritch Abomination shows up and everyone begins to flee in terror, you can see the NPC continuing to hop amidst the chaos until he gets picked up by the monster's tractor beam.

Masayoshi Shido'sPalace in Persona 5 takes the form of a cruise ship where he and his cronies party it up as they sail over a sunken Japan.

Haru: Even though this country may sink, he alone will survive Thats what this cognition is about, huh ?

Francis in Left 4 Dead sees the Zombie Apocalypse as a giant bar brawl and sometimes asks during a horde wave if the other survivors are having as much fun as he is. The comic backstory shows Francis looting a store during the outbreak and then going to the roof of a bar with his friends (while also dragging up a jukebox) and picking off zombies down below for a night of fun. Francis is also the only player character that doesn't show any fear of the zombies unless he gets pinned by a Hunter or Smoker or is being beaten to death by a Tank.

During the Agent's Corellia storyline in Star Wars: The Old Republic, the wealthy elites have gathered for a nihilistic "Apocalypse Party" on an airship as the planet burns down around them. Hunter brought them there specifically to keep them from using their resources and influence to minimize the bloodshed. If brought along for the mission Doctor Lokin will mention something similar having happened when Coruscant was sacked in the previous war.

Rose has roughly two minutes to save John from being killed by an incoming meteor. She spends the first forty seconds playing a violin refrain. The game sarcastically compliments the player's time management skills.

More figurative use of the trope would be when Dave and his Bro battle it out on the rooftop, with Houston being obliterated in the background. The battle itself is completely pointless.

Gunnerkrigg Court has a flashback to the great fire of Rome. The entity who will eventually be known as Jones is there, watching, completely unconcerned. Not even her dress catching fire can make her act.

In Penny Arcade, Tycho and Gabe are so addicted to Titanfall that Gabe thinks that the game crashing is a good thing since he'd never be able to stop playing otherwise. Tycho's house is burning down around him and he still won't stop playing, though he hopes the game crashes soon. He is already on fire too.

Gunshow has a comic featuring this dog, who continues to drink his coffee while his house burns down around him. Also used as an [adult swim]bump. This has become rather infamous as a meme for head-in-the-sand behavior.

Stand Still, Stay Silent: Emil's recurring dream, the full narrative of which has yet to be revealed, apparently involves him having dinner while buildings in his town are burning, with the fire being visible from a window of the room in which he's eating. At some point, he mentions that the fire eventually spreads to his house.

Web Original

In Dino Attack RPG, there's a mass evacuation of LEGO City just before the Final Battle, which absolutely reduces the city to ruins and ashes as the Dino Attack Team and their allies battle the largest army of Mutant Dinos they've ever faced... while Walter, Dude, and Donnie decide to go bowling in one of the city's abandoned bowling alleys.

The song "Distraction" from TGWTG film To Boldly Flee is all about this. In-universe, it was written by the Kryptonians after learning that their planet was coming apart, basically using this song to enjoy their lives a little longer, ignoring the imminent disaster until it actually comes. Granted, this doesn't play any part in the film other than as a nod to how one of Doug Walker's characters that play a part in it is a parody of General Zod, and the lyrics serve as a perfect lampshade to how the characters who are singing it are doing so as part of a distraction.

Episode 24 of the Jandrew Edits, "Flaunting danger", sees Picard deciding to learn to play the flute in the middle of what appears to be the Federation's desperate war against a Borg-Klingon alliance. He is greatly annoyed by his subordinates' attempts to get him to care about said war.

Riker:(on the viewscreen, with the smouldering remains of the bridge in the background) THE FEDERATION IS GONE! THE BORG IS EVERYWHERE!Picard:(completely disinterested) Yes. This is all very interesting, Number One. Riker:Please. You've got to help us! (screams as he is killed by an explosion)(Picard continues trying to play the flute) (cut to credits)

Western Animation

In the Futurama episode "Parasites Lost," Scruffy the Janitor continues reading a porno mag while Fry and Bender's botched repairs cause the boiler next to him to overheat and explode.

Scruffy: Scruffy's gonna die the way he lived.

In the season 4 finale of The Batman, Alfred and Lucius Fox watch helplessly from a balcony on Bruce's mansion while an alien invasion ravages Gotham City, drinking tea as ash falls like snow around them, before deciding that they're not that helpless. It's possibly the best scene in the entire series.

Played for laughs in an episode of Justice League. While the rest of the population of Las Vegas has fled because of Joker's bomb threats, a single old lady continues feeding coins into a slot machine.

Joker: I love this town!

Subverted in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Swarm of the Century". Pinkie takes one look at the crisis of the day and rushes off in search of a tuba. Everyone dismisses it as Pinkie's usual harmless psychosis and sets about trying to get the parasprites out of town, while Pinkie passes through periodically asking if anyone's seen yet another piece of the polka ensemble she's been diligently assembling. Just when it looks like all hope is lost and the parasprites are going to be the end of civilization, Pinkie marches by strapped into a one-pony band, and the parasprites follow her in Pied Piper fashion. It's implied throughout the episode that Pinkie's dealt with parasprites before, but couldn't communicate this fact to the others because they have trouble with the idea that Pinkie is capable of lucidity.

In one episode of Darkwing Duck, Negaduck used a magical artifact to steal the powers of the other four members of the Fearsome Five, which made him grow to giant size; he then proceeded to flood St. Canard and use electricity to heat the water to the boiling point. As Darkwing wracked his mind to think of a way to bring him down, the four powerless villains were doing nothing but sitting down and sadly drinking weak tea. (Of course, this is a Zigzagged Trope, because they were doing it because they were too depressed over the loss of their powers at the moment to help).

This also leads to a Eureka Moment when they realize that Negaduck had their weaknesses along with their powers.

Played with in Star Wars: Clone Wars. As the Confederacy attacks Coruscant, Chancellor Palpatine remains in his office, sipping tea and ignoring the Jedi's encouragement to take shelter. And when the Jedi-killer General Grievous smashes through the window, Palpatine reacts by scolding Grievous. But this is all for show: unknown to anyone present, Palpatine is also Darth Sidious, the shadowy leader of the Confederacy. He makes no effort to protect himself because had arranged his own kidnapping.

In the Superman: The Animated Series episode "Solar Power", Luminous hijacked LexCorp's communication satellites to block off the sun's yellow radiation and cripple Superman. Despite the fact that Luthor's denial of wrongdoing was hard to believe (even though he wasn't involved) and the crisis was costing his company millions in revenue, he spent at least part of the time calmly practicing archery.

Real Life

Trope Namer: According to legend, Emperor Nero played the fiddle (or lute, or lyre) while Rome was burning down. Supposedly, his men actually helped set the fire. This story was more likely than not circulated by those who disliked/despised him. All actual evidence found suggests he wasn't even in the city at the time and quite possibly wouldn't have been in any position to help. It is quite certain that he didn't have a fiddle (as he's often portrayed in cartoons) since they weren't invented until a thousand years later.

According to Tacitus, he rushed back to Rome when he heard of the fire and funded the relief effort.

Nero may not have done it, but there is little doubt that he benefited from it; the section of Rome that burned, Nero had had plans to raze it to build something. This fact probably contributed to the suspicion that hedeliberately set the fire.

In perhaps the most iconic moment in British naval history, Sir Francis Drake was playing a round of bowls in Plymouth when he learned of the Spanish Armada approaching England in 1588... and breezily declared that there was time to finish the game before he had to rush off. He was right: Being a veteran sailor who'd called Plymouth his home port since the very beginning of his career, Drake knew for a fact that the Spanish were struggling to sail against the tide and wouldn't reach sight of land for many hours. The English fleet made preparations to sail in relative leisure and intercepted the Armada well off-shore, where they inflicted a painfully one-sided defeat.

Lou Henry Hoover did this a lot when stranded in China during the Boxer Rebellion. One time she was playing solitaire when an artillery shell crashed through her front hall. She kept on playing.

According to a letter written by his nephew, Pliny the Elder took a nap in Stabiae near Pompeii... while Mt. Vesuvius was erupting. Even though he was there in part to assist in the rescue of the villagers. He suffocated for being too close to the epicentre. Other accounts more generously point out that he was somewhat advanced in years, and had been doing sterling work up until that point.

A similar PR disaster struck the unpopular and gaffe-prone Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who was heavily criticised for continuing to play a round of golf after hearing the news of the collision between the Ehime Maru and the USS Greenville.

English soldier Jack Churchill started playing his pipe while waiting for the Germans to capture him. Since he is also the guy who fought with bow, arrow and a claymore (the sword, not the anti-personnel mine) in World War II, we shouldn't be surprised.

Another famous example is Archimedes keeping on working on mathematical diagrams during the fall of Syracuse. He was killed by a Roman soldier who had come to arrest him. As the soldier approached, Archimedes was drawing some mathematical figures in the sand and shouted at the soldier, "Don't disturb my figures!" He believed that he was too valuable to simply murder, but he didn't count on the short temper of a random foot soldier.

He was correct in that belief; the Roman general in charge wanted him taken alive. That might have saved him if he'd had the sense to identify himself instead of being snippy. For extra irony, popular depictions have the Roman soldier ask him where Archimedes is.

Former Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon was widely compared with Nero after admitting that she went out to dinner with her husband and two friends on the evening of the Black Saturday bushfires, in spite of being warned of the likelihood of a high death toll shortly before leaving. One of her critics was future Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who was later accused of similar behaviour when he went to Hawaii on holiday in the middle of the 2019-2020 bushfire season.

The eight-member band aboard the Titanic continued playing music even when it became apparent that the ship was sinking. While their reasons for doing so died with them, most depictions have them continuing to play to try to calm the panicking passengers, particularly once they realized that not everyone would be able to survive.

There are many stories about high-ranking Nazis who were still in Berlin as the Soviets were entering during the closing days of World War II, engaging in hedonistic parties and orgies.

Joseph Goebbels was still making propaganda films in the final months before the Allied Forces finally conquered Germany. He was more preoccupied with making a good heroic picture of Germany's military past than actually looking at the state of his country's military at that moment.

So many people during the Black Death died, some people knew that they were likely to get it and die, so what did they do? Party! Similar things are apt to happen during any large-enough scale disaster. This trope, in fact, gave rise to an entire genre of mediaeval art called the Danse Macabre (or Totentanz)

An apocryphal story tells that even as Constantinople was on the verge of falling, the elders of the Byzantine Church ignored the threat and busied themselves discussing theological trivialities. Modern-day Turkish politicians occasionally bring the story up as a metaphor to criticize the hijacking of important debates by irrelevant non-issues.

It's worth noting that they had no reason to believe that Constantinople would actually fall. The loss of the city can be linked to a single gate, which wasn't secured properly by the men manning it.

During the Siege of Sarajevo, the Serbs would shell the city every night. It was under this backdrop of shelling that cellist Vedran Smailović would play Christmas songs in the middle of the town square while the city was being shelled around him! He said he did this to prove that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the spirit of humanity was still alive in that place. According to The Trans-Siberian Orchestra, this act of bravery/craziness was the inspiration for their song Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24.

The Sewol disaster also saw the infamous "missing seven hours", during which then-President of South Korea Park Geun-Hye was uncontactable while the ship was sinking in real time. Because of the lack of information, various rumours spread along the lines of this trope, including the president receiving plastic surgery, having a love affair with a married man, or even taking part in a cultist ritualnote the revelations of her connections with Choi Soon-Sil didn't help the last one. The latest theories say that she may have been sleeping during this timenote Park Geun-Hye is known to have suffered from sleeping disorders, and documents have revealed massive purchases of sleeping pills by the presidential office.

Barbara Tuchman in The Guns of August characterised Nicholas II as a grotesquely incompetent, apathetic leader, stating that when Nicholas received a telegram informing him of the Russian fleet's annihilation at Tsushima, he read it, put it away and then went on to play tennis.

During a World War 2 air raid, guests of the Savoy hotel were entertained throughout the night by an impromptu cabaret hosted by Noël Coward to lift their spirits. He later joked that it was every entertainer's dream: a captive audience.

On May 19, 1780, a cloud of darkness (a combination of forest-fire smoke and heavy clouds/fog) spread over New England. Some members of the Connecticut state legislature, fearing that Judgment Day was at hand, proposed adjournment; legislator Abraham Davenport convinced them to stay:

I am against an adjournment. The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause of an adjournment; if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I move that candles be brought, and we proceed to business.

In his book Collapse, anthropologist Jared Diamond wrote that civilisations suffered terminal decline where the elites gated themselves from the increasingly dire problems around them.

Starting in spring of 2018, as Channel Awesome imploded around Doug Walker, his brother Rob, and CEO Mike Michaud following several publicly revealed allegationsnote mismanagement, favoritism, hypocrisy, misogyny, unsafe filming conditions, and ignoring the concerns of other producers on their part; sexual harassment on the part on Mike Ellis; rape and sexual grooming allegations against the late Justin Carmichal and the poor responses from the management, the majority of the remaining producers basically said "Screw This, I'm Outta Here!" and proceeded to bolt. Only Brad Jones and Larry Bundy, Jr. remained—and Bundy only did so out of spite for being ignored by the management for the better part of a decade and a front row seat to watch the site collapse. With the four above, Michaud made horrendous apologies, Doug said he wasnt allowed to say anything except that set conditions had improved (and had apologised before for needing to stick in his head in the sand), Rob deleted all his social media but carried on perfectly normal in videos, and Jones burned bridges with all the former contributors he used to consider friends.

On March 8, 2020, Donald Trump tweeted a photo of him playing the violin, saying my next piece is called nothing can stop whats coming. It was intended to be a photo of Trump trolling his critics, but unfortunately it was the victim of bad timing, as it was posted the week after COVID-19 first began to spread across the United States, thus making comparisons to Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

Further, following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, at the hands of the Minneapolis police forces, protests, up to and including riot behavior, sprung up in all 50 US states and many other countries worldwide, demonstrating against police brutality and calling for reform. Tied to the Black Lives Matter movement, the protests have continued for a week as of this writing. Donald Trump has been largely silent on the matter, having done little more than clear a protest in Washington, DC for a photo op.

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